Lij Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and former editor of the Ghion Journal. He is currently the chair of Ethiopians for Constitutional Monarchy. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from...

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By Lij Teodrose Fikremariam on January 27, 2018

Today’s theme is bamboozle. As in the deception of the status quo and the demagogues who are pushed by the establishment in order to keep in us in perpetual confusion. We are thus going to lead off today’s dispensation of the Ghion Water with two in-house articles that were published yesterday at the Ghion Journal. Tim Nuell and I tried our level best to lift the curtains as we discussed two facets of the corporate-federal complex that enhances and injects a most cunning form of deception into the public square. Of course, as always, the work of other independent journalists and non-corporate voices follows as we continue to highlight citizen journalists who are doing their part to speak against the duplicity of corporate politicians and pundits. Without further ado, here is your daily Ghion Water.

Corporate Media is the Enemy of a Free Press

One of the major reasons to fear Trump, the television talking heads tell us, is censorship. Yet the First Amendment freedoms of the major media appear secure. Nobody is taking away MSNBC’s right to cover the news it considers crucial, like criticizing the president’s weight, or breaking down his diet-cola consumption. Nobody has stopped the New York Times from publishing its need-to-know bombshells including, “The President and the Porn Star”. Nobody has made it illegal for Newsweek and others to pathetically plummet to the depths of Godwin’s Law and compare Trump to Hitler.

What’s not currently safe from censorship? For starters, non-sanctioned reporting about the basic operations of our government. Wikileaks has opened our eyes to mass surveillance, the workings of the war machine, and political party corruption, so the CIA has declared the internet watchdog a “hostile intelligence service”. Is there an outcry from our corporate media over this attack on press freedom? To the contrary, Wikileaks is gleefully smeared with Russian innuendo at every turn. [from Tim Nuell of Ghion Journal]

Planned Recessions and Malicious Intentions

This is not trickle down economy, what capitalism has become is strangle up extortion. The Great Recession of 2008 was not an accident; economists who were not on the Wall Street dole and financial experts who actually have a soul were warning about the mortgage crisis years before the derivatives bubble collapsed and took the life savings of tens of millions of Americans with it. The collapse was intentional; recessions happen every seven to ten years on purpose as a means to redistribute wealth from the masses into the pockets of the oligarchy.

People with little savings and wiped out investors are forced to part ways with their assets through firesales as vultures buy up assets pennies on the dollar. When recessions appear, there to harvest distressed homes and devalued commodities are the very rich who vacated the markets before the shit hit the fan and hoarded cash in order to take advantage of once comfortable American who all the sudden became poverty-stricken. Even though the US economy swoons on a regular interval like clockwork, the recession of 2008 was not just a run of the mill correction—it was an implosion of historic proportions. The housing collapse should have witnessed a mass uprising. But the oligarchy did not get super wealthy because they are stupid; they had a spade card in reserve for the implosion they created and they knew was coming. [from Teodrose Fikre of Ghion Journal]

Crimes Against Humanity Watch

The pattern is clear: Trump seems to have given U.S. military generals carte blanche to unleash their maximum military power in a move reminiscent of the “shock and awe” campaign during the early days of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. The justification for unleashing this deadly military power has been the spread of Islamic State militants in a number of Arab and Muslim countries. But in the U.K., which is a major participant in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, a government official admitted what most U.S. military members won’t: that it is often difficult to distinguish between an Islamic State militant and a civilian. Clive Lewis, chair of an all-party U.K. parliamentary group on drones, recently told The Guardian, “One of the challenges that has emerged from our military efforts against [Islamic State] in Iraq and Syria is a lack of clarity regarding the legal criteria by which the [Ministry of Defence] determines an individual to be an [Islamic State] combatant.” [from Sonali Kolhatkar of Truthdig]

We are Governed by the Incestuous

Tim LaPira, a James Madison University associate professor who co-authored a book about the revolving door published in June, said the practice of leaving government service to lobby for industry isn’t as corrupt as it seems. Rather, as congressional staffs have shrunk over time, they’ve been forced to essentially outsource expertise to lobbyists, he said. “Don’t tell the private sector to stop doing it. Tell Congress to stop relying on the private sector so much,” LaPira said, adding that Congress spends just 0.5 percent of the discretionary budget on itself. [from Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism]

As We Sprint Towards Totalitarianism

In the rush to pass a spending bill earlier this week to reopen the government, Congress allowed a very dangerous Trojan horse to slip through. Language in the bill hamstrings the legislative branch from being able to oversee or halt covert action programs by the intelligence community (CIA, NSA, FBI etc.). Even the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence committee, Richard Burr, who is a big time friend of the deep state, explained how reckless this is. He said, “Effectively, the intelligence community could expend funds as it sees fit without an authorization bill in place and with no statutory direction indicating that an authorization bill for 2018 is forthcoming.” This means that unelected intelligence agencies can now move money around from program to program as they see fit WITHOUT Congress’s authorization or even knowledge. [from John F. O’Donnell from Redacted]

Why Are You Subjecting Me to This?

Just as Jared and Elizabeth Beck stand for the plaintiffs in the DNC Fraud lawsuit, Elizabeth Beck’s words spoke for all of us when she asked the heart of the establishment: “Why are you subjecting me to this?”

When CNN cut Elizabeth’s feed after she asked that question, it was a continuation of the same pattern that has been on a larger scale: the only response the establishment has, in the face of the truth, is to silence those who speak up for the rest of us. Whether it is cutting off Assange’s internet connection in 2016, or Google implementing algorithms that choke the audience of independent media, the power structure of the world we live in punishes truth-tellers and glorifies liars. [from Elizabeth Vos of Disobedient Media]

A Savage Truth Spoken

This Day in History

1916 – President Woodrow Wilson opens preparedness program. This was three years after he championed and helped to enact legislation that created the Federal Reserve. What Wilson was preparing America for was not just a rush to war but the takeover of the United States by a banking mafia that is now the most powerful arm of the government. Ah but that is the rub, the Federal Reserve is non-governmental, they are a private club for and by banking executives only who are solely responsible for setting the interest rates of our country. To the winner goes the spoils, to the people who finance the winners goes the world.

Quote of the Day

“Half a truth is often a great lie.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

Profiled This Day

Profiled on this day are the half truth-tellers and the full blown liars at MSNBC. Consider this section of the Daily Ghion Water a stand in for a regular segment that I usually publish titled “This Week’s Recap of Corporate Media Bullcrap”. Though there is an endless stream of corporate media frauds to choose from on any given day, one particular parrot at MSNBC was chosen for the “hackery honors” named Kyle Griffin after I saw a most duplicitous tweet from him last night.

Kyle is the producer for Lawrence O’Donnell’s show “The Last Word”. I will admit that I used to once view toadies at MSNBC like Rachel, Lawrence, Joy Reid and Co to be courageous journalists in pursuit of justice. Now I see them for what they are, corporate shills who speak against injustice through the prism of politics. They are not interested in equality or speaking truth to power, their interest is to agitate their specific demographic in order to garner more hits and to rile up the emotion of their loyal viewers to further the “us versus them” paradigm.

MSNBC and left leaning media entities are no different than the hounds over at Fox News. Tim Nuell noted in his article above the insidious game that mainstream media plays as they incite the public and induce factionalism. Go ahead and take a look at Kyle’s tweets and you will see nothing but one sided rants against Republicans. The notion that Kyle is considered a part of a “free press” is an indication of how far the “fourth estate” has sunk into the abyss of yellow journalism. To take in Kyle’s Tweets is to ingest DNC talking points; all he does is attack Republicans and utters not one word of criticism of the equally repugnant Democrats and their malicious economic and foreign policies.

Kyle is an extension of MSNBC’s corporate culture. The same personalities who had nothing to say as Obama continued the policies of endless wars and transferring wealth from the masses to the oligarchy all the sudden feign outrage at Trump as he continues the very immoral policies that Obama and Bush before him were pushing. Mainstream media from MSNBC, Fox News and their ilk are a propaganda arm of the corporate-federal complex; their reason d’etre is to divide and conquer through sensationalism and manufactured outrage. Goes to show, it is hard to speak truth to power when you are getting paid by the powerful. #AuthenticPropaganda

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Lij Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and former editor of the Ghion Journal. He is currently the chair of Ethiopians for Constitutional Monarchy. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from a life of upper-middle class privilege to a time spent with the huddled masses taught Teodrose a valuable lesson in the essence of togetherness and the need to speak against injustice.

Originally from Ethiopia with roots to Atse Tewodros II, Lij Teodrose is a former community organizer whose writing was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech in 2008. He pivoted away from politics and decided to stand for collective justice after experiencing the reality of the forgotten masses. His writing defies conventional wisdom and challenges readers to look outside the constraints of labels and ideologies that serve to splinter the people. Lij Teodrose uses his pen to give a voice to the voiceless and to speak truth to power.